Page 154 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

The second is the pressure change.

My ears pop. The archive’s pale blue light gutters once, then steadies. Across the central hollow, the darkness behind the archive records folds inward. Not a door opening this time. Not a system activating in response to my presence. This is intrusion. The chamber reacts before any of us do, lines of silver racing across the terraces toward the far wall, then stopping as if they have found something with authority old enough to argue back.

Brakk scrambles to his feet. “Tell me that is supposed to happen.”

“It is not supposed to happen,” Sira says.

“See, that is the kind of fast answer I hate.”

Ghar steps in front of me.

I grab his arm. “Do not block my line of sight.”

“Then move where I can protect you and you can see.”

“That is annoyingly reasonable.”

“Move, Anita.”

I move, because there is a difference between being independent and being too proud to use the seven-and-a-half-foot armored Vakutan currently offering practical geometry.

The far wall opens like black cloth being cut from behind.

Priestess Rolaev steps through the seam.

For several seconds, none of us speaks.

She is nearly eight feet tall, blue fur braided with ceremonial metal rings that catch the archive light in cold flashes. Ritual scars cut through the fur along her throat and down her forearms, their patterns too deliberate to be wounds of accident or battle alone. Her layered Ataxian robes are torn at one shoulder and darkened with dust, but the concealed armor beneath them remains intact. She carries no visible weapon. That should make her less frightening. It does not. Rolaev standing unarmed inside the final archive feels like a blade deciding hands are unnecessary.

Behind her, the seam closes.

Ghar’s claws flex. “Rolaev .”

“Ghar Vek’Talan,” she says softly. “Still placing your body between revelation and consequence.”

His voice goes flat. “Still murdering people and calling it mercy.”

A faint sorrow moves through her expression. I hate how genuine it looks. “Yes.”

Brakk lifts his cutter. “Well, that is unsettlingly self-aware.”

Rolaev turns her pale eyes toward him. “Brakk of Fratvoya. You survived longer than my projections suggested.”

“Good. I hope that irritated you.”

“It complicated several assumptions.”

“I will treasure that.”

Sira steps forward, her face pale with anger and grief. “How did you enter through the preservation field?”

Rolaev ’s gaze softens when it finds her. “I carried fragments before Anita Prentiss was born.”

My skin prickles.

I step out from behind Ghar’s shoulder enough to face her directly. “Fragments from the final archive?”

“From lesser wounds leading toward it.” Rolaev looks at me with the quiet intensity of someone who has waited years for a conversation she never wanted to have. “I wondered whether you would reach this chamber. I prayed, in my own way, that you would die first.”